Friday, October 30, 2015

Clarification:
The US now acknowledges that “direct action” is combat
by another name, as it starts (?) ground operations against ISIS
in Iraq... and Syria. Okay, so they didn't actually say “Syria”
yet.

Family:
Our closest relative is the orangutan, 20,000
of whom are danger
of being burned alive
in Indonesian forest fires.

Asked
& Obvious:
Are all these corporate share buy backs jeopardizing future growth?
Nope, if there was any hope of expanding future growth they wouldn't
be trying to bamboozle the shareholders with buybacks.

Buy
High, Sell Low:As part of the
budget/debt limit deal, at the GOP's insistence the
government will
sell off part of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. You know, the oil
we've squirrelled
away to protect against an unseen disaster to our oil supply. The
one we filled up at $80-$90 a barrel. Because, as
the GOP points out, we can get $44 abarrel for it these days.

Straw,
Last Few:We
live in terrible times in a terrible country, according to the GOP
candidates. Our women's physicians are harvesting brains from living
babies (Carly Fiorina). The federal government is persecuting
Christians for their religious beliefs (Ted Cruz), and putting them
in jail for practicing their beliefs (Mike Huckabee). Our nation is
being over-run by brown-skinned drug dealing rapists (Donald Trump).
Things are so bad that the president should unleash drone strikes on
those who would join ISIS (Lindsay Graham). And health insurance is
mandatory, gasp! (All of 'em.)

Farmer's
Almanac: It
takes a long time to walk from Aleppo, Syria to Sweden.
Those who set out today will still be enroute in December, looking
for shelter in January... It's a
human tragedy that will become far worse.

Freedom
From The Press:
The government refuses to obey a US District Court order to release
videotapes to the press that show prisoners at Guantanamo being
force-fed. Rectally. According to the judge, “what
the government is really saying is that its classification system
trumps the decisions of the federal courts.”

Simplification: In Bal Harbour, a ritzy community just north of Chicago, the
cops simplified law enforcement by becoming the criminals and running
a money-laundering service in and around Chicago. They “earned”
$2.4 million while returning $71.5 million to their clients who were
mostly drug dealers. No arrests were made. No police reports were
made. Profits, however, were made. And spent. Somewhat like the
Justice Department and Wall Street.

American
Heroes: We are
constantly bombarded with propaganda proclaiming that our combat
troops are “American heroes”. Unless, of course, they have PTSD.
If a soldier comes back from a second, third or fourth combat
deployment and is diagnosed with mental health problems (Imagine!),
the Army gives them dishonorable discharges for “misconduct”. In
the last six years they've done this over 22,000 times. This saves
the military and the VA immense amounts of money and lets the
military downplay the horrific psychological damage repeated
deployments required by an Army far too small for maintaining
the empire its
assigned tasks.

Well, the sales are not scheduled to begin until about 2017 or so and who knows what the price might be then, or whether there'll be a carbon tax or, for theat matter, and Exxon or Shell. No one benefits, I think - it's more of "the principal of the thing" for the GOPers to prettend that government for the poor is pay as you go. It's pay as you go for the rich, too, but the paying goes the other way.

Our Motto

Keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.